A few 3.5 questions

[Murg]

1. The SRD says a paladin's mount "is treated as a magical beast, not an animal, for the purpose of all effects that depend on its type." Does this mean the mount needs to eat? If so, is the mount summoned fully fed? If a paladin of over 13th level rides rides the mount to exhaustion (near death), unsummons it, then immediately summons it again, will it reappear fully rested? Likewise, could a starving paladin summon the mount, cut off a limb, eat the limb, unsummon the mount, then re-summon it fully healed?

2. It's implied that vampires must drink blood to survive, though I don't think it's explicitly stated anywhere in the SRD. How much blood would be enough for one vampire per day? Could they use their "children of the night" ability to summon some wolves and drink their blood? Are these summons purely magical or being drawn from a finite population somewhere? Like, if the vampire is in the middle of a desert, there are probably few if any naturally occurring wolves around...

3. Is there anything that makes phalanx-style fighting worthwhile in 3.5? Yes, I know there's a feat that give a +1 AC bonus for it, but in a world in which even mid-level mages have fireball spells, bunching up a lot of your troops into a ball seems like more of a liability than an asset. I had this idea for a highly organized hobgoblin army that fought like the ancient romans or greeks did, throwing lots of low level mooks in phalanxes at their enemies, with the formations making them a threat. But I know my players will immediately ask, "Why hasn't someone fireballed these guys into ash yet?" So...is this a viable concept for a large army of low level NPCs in 3.5, or am I just wasting my time?

Thank you for any advice!

[Inevitability]

Question 2 should be answered by Libris Mortis: I recall that book including tables that describe the nature of various undead's hunger, as well as the consequences of starvation.

[tyckspoon]

3. Is there anything that makes phalanx-style fighting worthwhile in 3.5? Yes, I know there's a feat that give a +1 AC bonus for it, but in a world in which even mid-level mages have fireball spells, bunching up a lot of your troops into a ball seems like more of a liability than an asset. I had this idea for a highly organized hobgoblin army that fought like the ancient romans or greeks did, throwing lots of low level mooks in phalanxes at their enemies, with the formations making them a threat. But I know my players will immediately ask, "Why hasn't someone fireballed these guys into ash yet?" So...is this a viable concept for a large army of low level NPCs in 3.5, or am I just wasting my time?


No. The things that make close formations work in real life just aren't modelled in D&D rules - when the smallest relevant unit of measure on the battlefield is a 5-foot square and you don't get any penalties for being attacked multiple times it just doesn't really matter if you can jam 5 spears into that 5 foot facing or not, and the rules don't care about you having 75% cover from all of your buddies overlapping shields because shields only ever provide a bonus to their individual user.

[Inevitability]

A slight caveat to that answer to #3: if you choose to model closely-packed phalanxes as mobs rather than individual soldiers, then they become incredibly powerful (though still vulnerable to area attacks). Of course, that would make for a very strange kind of warfare, where armor and weapons don't actually matter and losses are always 0% or 60% of a particular force.

[Murg]

Good catch about Libris Mortis, I had completely forgotten about that!

It's unfortunate that formation-based fighting really isn't in 3.5.

One thing I saw in a Pathfinder Adventure Path when the PCs go to Tsarist Russia is that they are fighting "troops" of soldiers, and each troop is like 20 guys, but rather than statting out 20 guys, there is just one stat block for the "troop," so something like that might be my best option.

[tyckspoon]

One thing I saw in a Pathfinder Adventure Path when the PCs go to Tsarist Russia is that they are fighting "troops" of soldiers, and each troop is like 20 guys, but rather than statting out 20 guys, there is just one stat block for the "troop," so something like that might be my best option.

This has usually been the best solution D&D could offer for mass combat - treat a grouping of combatants as a single larger creature rather than try to track damage, to hits, location, etc individually for hundreds or thousands of separate warriors. It still needs a lot of additional special rules to make it work sensibly but it's closer to the general D&D paradigm for how powerful enemies are supposed to be represented and fits better into the small-team skirmish level combat D&D is actually built for.

[rel]

There's enough in question 1 for a whole post I think.


1. The SRD says a paladin's mount "is treated as a magical beast, not an animal, for the purpose of all effects that depend on its type." Does this mean the mount needs to eat?

The SRD under Types and Subtypes has a magical beast type. Under traits it specifies that magical beasts eat, sleep, and breathe. So the mount does need to eat.


If so, is the mount summoned fully fed?

The calling process (detailed in the SRD under Spell Descriptions, conjuration and calling) doesn't fill a creatures belly. However the paladin class entry specifies the mount resides on the celestial realms when not in use.
It seems reasonable the mount can feed itself during its downtime.


If a paladin of over 13th level rides rides the mount to exhaustion (near death), unsummons it, then immediately summons it again, will it reappear fully rested?

The paladin mount class feature specifies that each time the mount is called, it appears in full health, regardless of any damage it may have taken previously, so that should work.
An argument could be made either way, but it seems reasonable to me.



Likewise, could a starving paladin summon the mount, cut off a limb, eat the limb, unsummon the mount, then re-summon it fully healed?

It's a calling effect, so the mount is really there, and he calling process does grant healing. But this last one is pretty far outside the rules, which don't really cover removing limbs from living creatures.
Ask your GM.

possible pitfalls include:
- the mount, while loyal, isn't willing to cooperate with an action that extreme
- removing the limb kills the mount (at which point it vanishes along with its leg, as per the mount ability)
- eating ones mount is a violation of the paladin's code

[Maat Mons]

"Why hasn't someone fireballed these guys into ash yet?" That's a question that can send you down a deep rabbit hole. Why hasn't every problem been fixed? There are definitely NPCs around with the capacity to fix them. Why isn't the setting a post-scarcity utopia? All the tools to needed make it into one are present in the game world.

[Eldan]

A Phalanx would have the small benefit of individual soldiers not being flankable. Usually just a smal lbenefit, but it would help against precision damage and a few other edge cases.

[Gruftzwerg]

1. The SRD says a paladin's mount "is treated as a magical beast, not an animal, for the purpose of all effects that depend on its type."
The mount still has the animal type (!), it sole counts as magical beast for "all effects that depend on type".

A spell's creates an effect, as do feats and abilities. The mount would behave like a magical beast for those spells/feats/abilities/.. (e.g. if you could somehow cast Alter Self onto your mount, it could select a target according to the magical beast type.).

But it doesn't qualify as a Magical Beast for stuff. While it may profit from a feat as if it where a Magical Beast, it doesn't qualify for feats that would require the Magical Beast type.

Since your type didn't change and your traits are not effects, your traits remain unchanged. The mount still has the normal animal traits.





Does this mean the mount needs to eat? If so, is the mount summoned fully fed?
Yes as animal it still does need to sleep.
And it is always summoned at full health:

The mount is the same creature each time it is summoned, though the paladin may release a particular mount from service.

Each time the mount is called, it appears in full health, regardless of any damage it may have taken previously.
Even if it was/is starving, it always is summoned at full health.
Normally when there was enough downtime since you last summoned it, you can assume that it has fed itself as it would normally do. At higher levels when you can summon it for an entire day and longer I (as DM) would encourage the player to fed it. While there are no rules covering this, I believe this is still the best approach here.




If a paladin of over 13th level rides rides the mount to exhaustion (near death), unsummons it, then immediately summons it again, will it reappear fully rested?
Depends on how far your DM will stretch the term "at full health". He could interpret it sole as HP, leaving any debuffs with a remaining duration. Or he could let it fully recover from any ill effect. Imho the latter requires DM fiat.


Likewise, could a starving paladin summon the mount, cut off a limb, eat the limb, unsummon the mount, then re-summon it fully healed?

Full Health doesn't mean that your limbs did grow back. Thus relies on the same DM fiat as above. But even then, practically it could be problematic with your alignment and your deity may dislike what you are doing with your borrowed powers. Dunno if you are willing to take up that risk. Some DMs might screw you for such an attempt.

[Inevitability]

A phalanx-like style of fighting could also be achieved by the Shieldmate feat, come to think of it. It wouldn't be a huge bonus, but it's an excuse for tight formations at least (or at least one guy with a tower shield surrounded by melee warriors).

[Saintheart]

A phalanx-like style of fighting could also be achieved by the Shieldmate feat, come to think of it. It wouldn't be a huge bonus, but it's an excuse for tight formations at least (or at least one guy with a tower shield surrounded by melee warriors).

It's not really for PCs as such, but there are some techniques relating to Teamwork Benefits that can make groups a bit more militarily tougher. The oldest minmax resource I kept running into on it was The Spartan Handbook, or, How to Rock the Phalanx. (https://bg-archive.minmaxforum.com/index.php?topic=4963.0)

Other stuff that wasn't mentioned in the handbook but might be worth a look for building big units:

Allied Defense (ShinSouth) – when used by packs of minions, it makes your big bruiser in the centre of the line a lot harder to hit. Your minions sacrifice their attack accuracy while boosting the AC of all adjacent allies, which slaps multiple iterations of Combat Expertise on the guy in the centre. Reach weapons allow a second rank of allies to contribute as well. As close as you’ll get to a Roman tortoise formation.

Distracting Attack (MinHB) – this has a whiff of cheese, but you equip big packs of weak minions with this one; when they attack a target, whether their attack succeeds or not, all other creatures get a +1 circumstance bonus against that target until the next turn. Circumstance bonuses usually stack, especially if they’re from different sources (i.e. all your friends’ distracting attacks). Therefore, have a covey of little 1 HD minions dance around missing but powering up the big beefy boi’s attack roll when he goes last. Consider in combination with Allied Defense.

Swarmfighting (CWar) – stack mobs of Small minions together for morale bonuses on attack rolls. Consider in combination with Distracting Attack and Allied Defense above.

Teamwork Benefits are also something that groups of up to 8 characters can use. There's not a lot of them across the books, and they generally aren't worth it for PC parties, but they might be more interesting for big massed units:

Coordinated Awareness (FoW): Team Leader takes 4 ranks in Sense Motive and Spot, and has uncanny dodge. Team Members all need 2 ranks in Sense Motive and Spot. If one team member is flanked, but he has another team member adjacent to him, the enemy doesn’t get +2 to the attack rolls from flanking – although other elements of the flanking condition still apply. Not fantastic on its own, but nice when combined with Flanking Enhancement, below.

Crowded Charge (PHB 2): Team Leader takes 8 ranks in Jump, Team members all have 1 rank in Jump. Other team members don’t block movement for determining whether a team member can charge, though the team member still has to end their movement in an unoccupied space. Very nice for tight quarters passages, especially for a front rank of mooks with tower shields and Reach weapons masking the uberchargers behind them. (And consider in conjunction with Wall of Steel below).

Cunning Ambush (PHB 2): Team leader has 8 ranks in Hide and Listen, team members have 1 rank in Hide. If the team members get the team leader to prepare their hiding positions, he makes the Hide check to hide them. This is a very handy boost for low-level mooks supporting an ambusher ahead of the party’s arrival, especially if you rule the leader can take 20 on Hide checks.

Improved Cunning Ambush (PHB 2): Team leader’s got 12 ranks in Hide and Listen, team members have 3 ranks in Hide and the Cunning Ambush benefit. During the surprise round, any team member who’s not surprised and has been camouflaged can take a full round’s worth of actions.

Evade Incoming (FoW): Tumble 8 ranks and base Reflex +7, evasion on leader, Tumble 3 ranks and base Reflex +3 on team members. The more of you are hit with an area effect that allows a Reflex save, the higher a circumstance bonus each of you get on that Reflex save. This is a nice way to mitigate the damage coming in from common stuff like Fireball.

Fearsome Roster (HoB): Leader has Intimidate 8 ranks, team members have 1 rank Intimidate. If there’s two of you visible, the enemy takes a penalty on morale checks equal to 1 + 0.25xHD of the lowest-level member of your team. If you’re going to fear-blast and quietly slip in the morale system from Heroes of Battle then this is a hell of a way to make the job easier.

Flanking Enhancement (FoW): Leader needs 8 ranks in Sense Motive and Spot, uncanny dodge and the Coordinated Awareness teamwork ability. Members need 2 ranks in Sense Motive and Spot, and the Coordinated Awareness ability. The more flanking pairs you have attacking the same foe, the bigger the flanking benefit: two pairs of flankers on a single foe get +4 to hit, not +2, and so on. Tricky to qualify for but for a group of low level rogues (Marrulurks?) swarming the opposition, this could be pretty good.

Friendly Fire Evasion (DMG 2, HoB): Leader needs Spellcraft 4 ranks and evasion ability, members need base Reflex save +2, Spellcraft 1 rank. Get Evasion, but only for spells from your team members. If one of your dudes likes area of effect spells and you have a rogue in the party, this is good for smacking PCs in the face with AoE for once.

Improved Friendly Fire Evasion (HoB) grants Improved Evasion in place of Evasion. Can be combined with Evade Incoming for extra security.

Group Enmity (FoW): Leader needs Favored Enemy and Knowledge 8 ranks in the favored enemy’s creature type. Members need same Knowledge, 4 ranks. Everyone gets half the leader’s Favored Enemy benefits against the favored enemy. It almost warrants having a ranger among the monsters.

Heavy Cavalry (HoB): Leader needs Handle Animal 4 ranks, Ride 8 ranks, Mounted Combat, Trample. Members need 1 rank in Ride. The team member can squeeze into the same squares without penalty, opponents can’t avoid overruns, and the team’s mounts count as 1 size category larger for resolving overruns. Could be pretty loltastic in the right circumstances.

Indirect Fire (PHB 2): Leader needs Precise Shot, BAB +6; Team members need Spot 3 ranks. Cut cover bonuses in half, gain a reroll on miss chance if the target has concealment. Yes, including on invisible opponents. Very handy once the party starts doing disappearing acts.

Invisibility Sweep (DMG 2, HoB): Team Leader needs Blind-Fight, team members don’t need anything. Team members can check for presence of invisible opponents by making touch attacks into squares. If successful, everyone in earshot is considered to have pinpointed the enemy.

JOINT. BULL. RUSH. (HoB): Team Leader needs Improved Bull Rush, team members don’t need anything. If all team members ready a bull rush on the count of the member with the lowest initiative, and all move at the same time, every additional team member in the bull rush adds their STR bonus on the attempt. If you have enough people, or even just a couple of guys with good STR, this is a great way to get stuff like Shock Trooper working.

JOINT. RAM. (HoB): Basically, it’s Joint Bull Rush but using Improved Sunder. By RAW, doesn’t have to apply only to doors, i.e. get to breaking the PCs’ magic weapons by everyone wielding a portable ram or a 10 foot pole!

MASSED. CHARGE. (PHB 2): Team leader needs 5 ranks in Balance, members 1 rank. Everyone moves on the same initiative count, everyone charges and attacks the same target. Everyone gets a bonus on the attack roll equal to the number of teammates participating (above the +2 on a charge). By RAW the charges don’t have to come from the same direction, i.e. you could swarm the PC from all directions and get a very nice little boost to charge attacks. And it’s on a skill you’re likely to take anyway to avoid Grease traps.

Missile Volley (PHB 2): Leader needs Far Shot and Precise Shot, members need Point Blank Shot. If everyone with a missile weapon readies an action to fire with the team leader, everyone (including the leader) gets a bonus equal to the number of team members firing. Everyone except the team leader loses additional attacks … but the team leader doesn’t. This is a great one for a pack of low level, single-shot mooks coordinating with a higher-level archer, especially if the higher-level archer has something like Power Shot from Peerless Archer which allows him to maximise his damage on the shot.

SNAP OUT OF IT (DMG 2): Leader needs Concentration 8 ranks (or Iron Will), members need Concentration 1 rank. Adjacent team member can spend a full-round action to give a team member another save if they’re known to be under a compulsion effect. Rerolls against the PC scanners are always priceless, especially for low costs.

Spell Barrage (DMG 2): Leader needs Spellcraft 8 ranks, team members 2 ranks. When a team member casts a spell needing a Reflex save, all enemies take a -2 on subsequent Reflex saves for each subsequent Reflex save made during that round due to other team members. The benefit itself suggests cheesing this by having UMD rogues cast reflex-drawing spells from wands in order to nerf targets’ saves before the mage comes in with his big blasty spell.

Spell Onslaught (FoW): Leader needs Spellcraft 7 ranks, members 3. If you ready actions to cast offensive spells against the same target at the same instant, get bonuses to overcome Spell Resistance equal to 1 + number of spells being cast against it (maximum +5). Area effects and missed ranged attack rolls don’t count. Look, a +5 on Caster Level checks to beat PC’s Spell Resistance isn’t anything to sniff at.

Superior Flank (DMG 2, HoB): Leader needs +4d6 sneak attack, members BAB +3. Resembles Island of Blades from ToB, if 2 members of the team flank the same enemy, all members of the team can attack as if flanked. Can be handy if you can just get one opponent behind the PC…

Team Melee Tactics (PHB 2): Leader needs Combat Expertise and Dodge, members BAB +6. If a team member uses Aid Another to grant another member a bonus on attack rolls, that bonus increases by +1. One for the lower-end mooks looking to help the big bruiser in their line actually hit, although by the time this comes in it’s a bit low-ish.

Wall of Steel (PHB 2): Leader needs Tower Shield Proficiency and BAB +8, members need shield proficiency and BAB +2. As swift action, adjacent member of the team can lose his shield bonus to AC and grant it to the adjacent team member. Stacks with adjacent shield bonuses, if any. So the two-handed fighter takes the front line and a couple of guys stand behind with tower shields doing nothing but giving AC to the damage-dealer, since arguably you can grant more than one iteration of the bonus from two different sources.


The trickiest element, though, is that most of the time the big groups are still basically vulnerable to AoE spells, especially ones that target the Will save.


Lastly, there are one or two variant Fighters that do something about sharing shield bonuses:

Bodyguard (Dragon #310) (Variant Fighter): A fighter with the Cover special ability can as a free action assign their Shield Bonus to an adjacent creature. This shield bonus stacks with “such bonuses as the creature already has”. This would appear to override the rule that multiple shield bonuses do not stack, since "such bonuses" either is referring to all bonuses to AC that the character already has, or is referring only to dodge or shield bonuses ... which still accomplishes the same thing.

Horseman (Dragon #310) (Variant Fighter): A fighter with the Share Shield special ability can share his shield bonus with his mount on a DC 15 Ride check as a move action.

For example, four of your minions are variant Fighter Bodyguard 1s, who have selected the Cover special ability. Each has the Shield Wall feat. Each minion carries a Tower Shield, and therefore each of the four have a Shield Bonus of +6. Each minion uses the Cover special ability to assign their shield bonuses to you. Per the special ability's wording, each of the shield bonuses stacks with yours, cumulatively. Thus leaving you with a shield bonus of +24.

[PoeticallyPsyco]

RE fighting in formation, a few years back there was an optimization contest for low level armies, The Military Games (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?593925-Military-Games-Act-1-the-Stand-of-300!&p=24082091&viewfull=1). The first comp was all about heavy infantry tasked with defending a narrow canyon (i.e., recreating the battle of Thermopylae).

Lots of good ideas for armies, but my entry in particular (Lasciel's Army of the Dragon) leant into the idea of tactics. Alas, the diagrams I made to illustrate the various formations have been lost to time, but the premise was to arrange platoons so that as many auras and buffs were layered as possible. Each 4-man group (Clump) had two members with Steely Glare to penalize attackers; two members stand in front with tower shields and tridents and two in the back with halberds and bucklers, and when one member goes down they use Team Shield Maneuver to slide that one to safety where they can be healed up by auras and maneuvers. Their attack is low, but their damage and defenses are far above what anything in the low-level bracket should be able to handle. Counterspell Song, tower shields, and auras granting Fire Resistance and Fast Healing should make them favored even into spellcasters, as long as they can eventually close to melee range.

I'm annoyed that I've completely lost my formation diagrams, but the premise of each formation was simple: walls two soldiers deep, with the officers positioned either in the center or surrounded so that their auras could reach everyone.

Page 1 (http://bit.ly/2kfZr9o), page 2 (http://bit.ly/2lTPAGO)

[YellowJohn]

3. Is there anything that makes phalanx-style fighting worthwhile in 3.5? Yes, I know there's a feat that give a +1 AC bonus for it, but in a world in which even mid-level mages have fireball spells, bunching up a lot of your troops into a ball seems like more of a liability than an asset. I had this idea for a highly organized hobgoblin army that fought like the ancient romans or greeks did, throwing lots of low level mooks in phalanxes at their enemies, with the formations making them a threat. But I know my players will immediately ask, "Why hasn't someone fireballed these guys into ash yet?" So...is this a viable concept for a large army of low level NPCs in 3.5, or am I just wasting my time?

I statted the Shining Axes for phalanx fighting when I ran RHoD. I messed around with their racial weapon proficiencies, swapping Urgosh for Dwarven Warpike. They were 6HD fighters with the following feats:

Axe Focus - mostly for flavor
Power Attack
Combat Reflexes
Hold the Line
Backstab
Double Team
Formation Expert

Backstab and Double Team are from Dragon (Double Team is in the Compendium), and is a nice combo: if you and a friend both threaten someone, you flank them. If a target you flank attacks someone else, they provoke an AOO.
Hold The Line plays into the synergy: if you are the target of a charge, the charger provokes. So when someone charges the formation, they take an AOO from the dwarf they charge, one from the second rank, and probably attacks from their neighbours as well.

Formation Expert gives the front rank (with tower shields) +1 AC, gives the second rank (with Warpikes) +2 to hit, and allowed the rear ranks to fill gaps in the formation instantly when someone drops.

Never had to roll dice for them, but I felt like they got mileage from being in formation. Someone better at optimising could likely do something better with trip reach weapons and such.

[wilphe]

"Why hasn't someone fireballed these guys into ash yet?" That's a question that can send you down a deep rabbit hole. Why hasn't every problem been fixed? There are definitely NPCs around with the capacity to fix them. Why isn't the setting a post-scarcity utopia? All the tools to needed make it into one are present in the game world.

IRC Heroes of Battle explicitly lays out two different ways of approaching warfare:

1) Where you do use standard fantasy tropes like massed formations, conventional castles and heavy cavalry despite that magic would "logically" mean their obsolescence. You then either don't bother to justify this or take the opportunity for world building that it presents (Mages are rare / have better things to do / law and custom say they don't intervene in this way)

2) Where you consider how magic would affect things and it starts to look like modern war. Units spread out to avoid firepower, castles are bunkers with lead lined walls and anti-teleportation magic


You are ill advised to try to do both at once

[Buufreak]

Other stuff that wasn't mentioned in the handbook but might be worth a look for building big units:


Thank you kind entity, you just did alot of my homework for me.

[Telonius]

3 depends a bit on the setting. If you're in a magic-poor setting where casters are rare (or where there's some sort of social convention against using mages in direct warfare), phalanx fighting could still have a place. If your setting is one where you can't throw a rock without missing an Epic character (because of course they'd have immunity to thrown rocks)? Probably not going to make as much sense.

[Maat Mons]

Not sure if this was covered in any of the linked threads, but six Bards can be a major boost to an army. An alphorn (Song and Silence, p42) lets Bardic Music work at a range of a mile or more. Dragonfire Inspiration (Dragon Magic, p17) converts the +X to attack and damage from Inspire Courage to +Xd6 energy damage. With five different energy types to choose from, plus one Bard not using Dragonfire Inspiration, you can get six Bards performing without any of the bonuses overlapping. With 1st-level Bards, that’s +1 attack and +1+5d6 damage. With 2nd-level Bards who cast Inspirational Boost Spell (Spell Compendium, p124), it’s +2 attack and +2+10d6 damage. Of course, the Bards need Draconic Heritage (Dragon Magic, p17), which means they also need either a Sorcerer level or Dragontouched (Races of the Dragon, p18). Without flaws, that could push things to 3rd level.

[YellowJohn]

Flanking Enhancement (FoW): Leader needs 8 ranks in Sense Motive and Spot, uncanny dodge and the Coordinated Awareness teamwork ability. Members need 2 ranks in Sense Motive and Spot, and the Coordinated Awareness ability. The more flanking pairs you have attacking the same foe, the bigger the flanking benefit: two pairs of flankers on a single foe get +4 to hit, not +2, and so on. Tricky to qualify for but for a group of low level rogues (Marrulurks?) swarming the opposition, this could be pretty good.

I didn't spot this the first time around.
Rule 0 Teamwork benefits to work with an entire military formation, this gets absolutely brutal with the Double Team feat (DC 95) & reach weapons - automatic +8 to hit unless you're on the flanks. Throw in Awl Pikes and it gets even sillier. If you'll excuse me, I need to go re-build my Shining Axe Sergeants...

[Saintheart]

I didn't spot this the first time around.
Rule 0 Teamwork benefits to work with an entire military formation, this gets absolutely brutal with the Double Team feat (DC 95) & reach weapons - automatic +8 to hit unless you're on the flanks. Throw in Awl Pikes and it gets even sillier. If you'll excuse me, I need to go re-build my Shining Axe Sergeants...

Speaking of, do you mind if I steal your Shining Axes build stub and preserve them for posterity over in the Red Handbook of Doom thread?

[Zanos]

1. The SRD says a paladin's mount "is treated as a magical beast, not an animal, for the purpose of all effects that depend on its type." Does this mean the mount needs to eat? If so, is the mount summoned fully fed? If a paladin of over 13th level rides rides the mount to exhaustion (near death), unsummons it, then immediately summons it again, will it reappear fully rested? Likewise, could a starving paladin summon the mount, cut off a limb, eat the limb, unsummon the mount, then re-summon it fully healed?
I feel like eating your holy mount is probably against the paladin code somewhere. That said, the summoned mount is actually a called, mount, not a summoned one. The paladin does not create it, he simply teleports it in from the upper planes where it normally lives. It is called in full health, but what exactly that means isn't clear. Resurrection also restores a creature to full "hit points, vigor, and health", so i would probably assume that it comes back at full hit points, cured of any diseases, without any ability damage/drain, and with missing limbs restored. Knowing that, if a Paladin was truly desperate, this might be something that could happen, but eating your trusted companion isn't something that strikes me as particularly Lawful and Good.



2. It's implied that vampires must drink blood to survive, though I don't think it's explicitly stated anywhere in the SRD. How much blood would be enough for one vampire per day? Could they use their "children of the night" ability to summon some wolves and drink their blood? Are these summons purely magical or being drawn from a finite population somewhere? Like, if the vampire is in the middle of a desert, there are probably few if any naturally occurring wolves around...
Libris Mortis has the exact rules, but checking it I don't actually see a requirement that undead feed on creatures with any measure of intelligence. Children of the Night is a supernatural ability and violates normal physics, so can be used anywhere regardless of whether or not the creatures in question are actually there, by RAW.



3. Is there anything that makes phalanx-style fighting worthwhile in 3.5? Yes, I know there's a feat that give a +1 AC bonus for it, but in a world in which even mid-level mages have fireball spells, bunching up a lot of your troops into a ball seems like more of a liability than an asset. I had this idea for a highly organized hobgoblin army that fought like the ancient romans or greeks did, throwing lots of low level mooks in phalanxes at their enemies, with the formations making them a threat. But I know my players will immediately ask, "Why hasn't someone fireballed these guys into ash yet?" So...is this a viable concept for a large army of low level NPCs in 3.5, or am I just wasting my time?
Other posts have provided resources, but this is really a setting and worldbuilding question. If mid-level mages are a common sight on battlefields in your setting, splitting up so only a few soldiers are roasted by fireballs makes sense. If your battlefields are mostly 1-3rd level warriors, then getting a +3 bonus to AC for fighting in formation can be quite powerful, numerically. A flat 15% shift in survivablity is a pretty major advantage in large scale combat, although if you think about mechanics too hard you wind up with military strategies like "everyone takes total cover behind a tower shield until they're within charge distance and then drops it and pulls out a greatsword and charges."

One mechanic I haven't seen mentioned yet though is Steel Devils, which actually get very large bonuses to fighting in groups, being the backbone of the armies of Hell and all. Ironically best used as archers, though.

Keep in mind that the default rules have PC classes be fairly rare sights. Using the DMG demographics, there's a good chance a metropolis of 50k+ people doesn't even have a double digit number of wizards 5th level or above, but there could be thousands of 1st level warriors, and even ideally packed, only 42 of them will fit into the 2 dimensional area of a fireball. And then there's the problem of motivating the wizards to put themselves in bow range; the type of wizard immune to mundane hazards and that can win your wars on your behalf is one that you better have a very tight chain on, and he probably does not care about your problems.

If powerful wizards and phalanx formations coexist in your setting, perhaps the wizards are off doing something else, like preventing the phalanxes from being roasted by another enemy wizard, or fighting the various ogres and giants and trolls and other nasties that massed level 1 NPC soldiers aren't particularly well equipped to defeat. It's like asking why the Evil Overlord doesn't simply show up and roast the heroes while they're level 1; of course he doesn't do that, because the entire reason he has constructed a massive apparatus in his bid for world conquest is so that he can spend his time doing more important things.


"Why hasn't someone fireballed these guys into ash yet?" That's a question that can send you down a deep rabbit hole. Why hasn't every problem been fixed? There are definitely NPCs around with the capacity to fix them. Why isn't the setting a post-scarcity utopia? All the tools to needed make it into one are present in the game world.
Setting optimizers must be screaming their heads off when they look at the inefficient allocation that takes place in the real world. :smalltongue:

[Maat Mons]

Personally, I like the feat Martial Stance (Island of Blades) much more than the feat Double Team. It can be taken at a lower level and doesn’t require your allies to also have the feat. Admittedly, Island of Blades requires being adjacent, not merely threatening.

The guys in the second rank aren’t going to get any attacks of opportunity. You can’t make attacks of opportunity against someone with cover relative to you. When attacking with a reach weapon, creatures between you and your target provide it with soft cover, even if the obstructing creatures are allied to you.

I wonder if hot phalanx-on-phalanx action combat is the one situation where Whirlwind Attack is valuable. A soldier in the front-middle has ten enemies within reach if he has a reach weapon.

[Murg]

Wow, some really great info here, thanks so much!

Rel and Gruftzwerg,

Thank you for the paladin advice. In this case, it would be a matter of life or death for the paladin and those who travel with the paladin, and it would be a temporary situation. Basically, the paladin and friends would be in a desolate food-less area, and the only way to get more food would be to physically leave the area, something that would take weeks of travel time, during which at least some members of the group would likely starve to death without resorting to extreme measures.

As far as vampires summoning wolves anywhere to get access to blood, that’s great news. The story would be helped if a vampire also made the trek across the the desolate wasteland (though not in the same group as the paladin, so sucking the blood of the paladin/mount/companions would not be possible).

On the subject of formation-based combat, this is great because I was about to give up on the idea entirely, but now I see that there are at least some options available! Thanks especially for Saintheart and PoeticallyPsyco for the links and analysis of how to make it work. Some of these co-operative feats seem actually a little *too* good!

The Swarmfighting feat might actually work really well with what I envisaged, because the army in question would be using kobolds (small creatures) as skirmishers and scouts. Also, Maat Mons, the army-effective bard buffs would also be useful (maybe too useful) because the BBEG is an epic level bard.

YellowJohn, thank you for the tactical ideas. Formation Expert is definitely something that I’ve been looking at, though with with high BAB requirement it would have to be reserved for elite troops rather than the normal rank and file. I’ve never played RHoD, but I do own it — though like so much other D&D stuff I have never gotten around to reading it, lol! But yes, based on my limited skimming I had totally forgotten it had a big organized hobgoblin army in it, which would really sync with what I’m trying to do, so there are definitely some ideas (thematically, if nothing else) that I could plunder from RHoD (I also saw there's a RHoD handbook here on the forums which has some good ideas in it).

Zanos, the setting is Forgotten Realms (though with many house rules and modifications), so mid-level casters would be common enough to be a threat to phalanx-based armies, unfortunately. But I am definitely not aiming for a Tippyverse-style “points of light” campaign. But with all the good ideas here I think I can come up with enough so that phalanx-based armies are a threat at least.

Thank you again for the ideas!

[Gruftzwerg]

Why not ask the mount to fill its saddlebags with vegetables from its home plane? The paladin mount has an INT score and should be understanding basic commands like that. Dismiss it and summon/call it the next day in the hope that it brings some food.^^

( beware of Animated Rulebooks xD )

[CallMeBagel]

3. Is there anything that makes phalanx-style fighting worthwhile in 3.5? Yes, I know there's a feat that give a +1 AC bonus for it, but in a world in which even mid-level mages have fireball spells, bunching up a lot of your troops into a ball seems like more of a liability than an asset. I had this idea for a highly organized hobgoblin army that fought like the ancient romans or greeks did, throwing lots of low level mooks in phalanxes at their enemies, with the formations making them a threat. But I know my players will immediately ask, "Why hasn't someone fireballed these guys into ash yet?" So...is this a viable concept for a large army of low level NPCs in 3.5, or am I just wasting my time?

I had a DM run NPC's with phalanx and some other shields feats, We fought them in kind of tight spaces it was not an easy fight. We didn't have any real blaster casting, or party was a trip fighter (sword and axe), cleric, and duskblade.

[YellowJohn]

Speaking of, do you mind if I steal your Shining Axes build stub and preserve them for posterity over in the Red Handbook of Doom thread?

No problems at all :smallcool:

[YellowJohn]

Personally, I like the feat Martial Stance (Island of Blades) much more than the feat Double Team. It can be taken at a lower level and doesn’t require your allies to also have the feat. Admittedly, Island of Blades requires being adjacent, not merely threatening.

That would allow the 'build' to come online earlier, but requires an extra feat (Martial Strike). When you're statting up an entire military formation, 'everyone else has to have the feat too' isn't really a downside.


The guys in the second rank aren’t going to get any attacks of opportunity. You can’t make attacks of opportunity against someone with cover relative to you. When attacking with a reach weapon, creatures between you and your target provide it with soft cover, even if the obstructing creatures are allied to you.

...well that sucks.
The Precise Swing feat from Eberron Campaign Setting would get around this, but its BAB +5 prerequisite means it would need to replace Formation Expert, which is sad.
Alternatively, you could talk to your DM about/Rule 0 a teamwork benefit that allows you to ignore cover from other team members.


I wonder if hot phalanx-on-phalanx action combat is the one situation where Whirlwind Attack is valuable. A soldier in the front-middle has ten enemies within reach if he has a reach weapon.

That does look good. Shame none of the prerequisites are useful for phalanx fighting :smallamused:

[Saintheart]

Alternatively, you could talk to your DM about/Rule 0 a teamwork benefit that allows you to ignore cover from other team members.

Modify the Crowded Charge teamwork benefit. It already gets halfway there because it allows you to charge through your allies as if they weren't in your way, though you still have to be in an unoccupied square.

[Olive_Sophia]

Other stuff that wasn't mentioned in the handbook but might be worth a look for building big units:


I'd like to express thanks for this as well. I'm writing a handbook where some of these would be good options. I'll give you credit for collecting them.